Disney CEO faces his first big Trump test as Jimmy Kimmel prepares to address controversy

By Brian Stelter, CNN

(CNN) — New Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro, who succeeded Bob Iger just six weeks ago, is facing his first big Trump test.

President Donald Trump is publicly pressuring Disney to fire Jimmy Kimmel over a joke by the ABC late-night host last week.

There is no indication that Disney is thinking about doing so. But the pressure – which is also coming from First Lady Melania Trump and a host of Trump allies – has created a headache for D’Amaro, who previously ran Disney’s theme parks and now oversees networks like ABC as well.

A spokesperson for D’Amaro did not respond to a request for comment. Representatives for ABC and Kimmel have also remained tight-lipped since the controversy erupted.

Kimmel’s producers were busy preparing Monday afternoon for the night’s new episode, which is set to air at 11:35 pm on ABC stations.

Last week Kimmel promoted Oz Pearlman, who was meant to be the entertainer at Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, as his special guest on Monday night.

But Pearlman did not get to perform for the president and the assembled crowd after a gunman opened fire outside the dinner ballroom.

Pearlman subsequently pulled out from the Kimmel appearance; he will be replaced by Jon Lovett, the liberal comedian and podcaster who used to be a speechwriter for President Barack Obama.

Lovett has appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” multiple times in the past.

The other Monday night guest who was promoted last week, actor Anthony Anderson, is still set to appear on the show.

Behind the scenes, ABC executives and Kimmel are likely discussing what he might say on Monday night’s show about the controversy.

Kimmel quipped on last Thursday’s episode that the First Lady had “a glow like an expectant widow.”

The joke – seemingly about the president’s age – was one in a long list of poison-tipped punchlines at Trump’s expense. Kimmel pretended to perform a roast of the president, since the correspondents’ dinner was set to feature Pearlman, a mentalist, instead of a comedian.

The “expectant widow” line was recontextualized after Saturday night’s shooting. The alleged gunman was charged Monday with attempting to assassinate Trump.

Pro-Trump media outlets and influencers blasted Kimmel online, foreshadowing a concerted effort from the Trump administration to push him out.

The first lady condemned Kimmel on Monday morning, and the president followed up a few hours later, calling Kimmel’s on-air comment a “despicable call to violence” and linking it directly to the shooting incident.

For Disney, this all feels a bit like a rerun.

Last September, amid an earlier Trump administration pressure campaign against Kimmel, ABC suspended the show “indefinitely,” only to bring it back less than a week later.

The network managed to anger both Trump opponents for benching Kimmel and appearing to capitulate to the president and Trump fans by allowing Kimmel back on the air.

That time around, when Iger was still CEO, ABC felt it had to move quickly after two big owners of ABC-affiliated stations, Nexstar and Sinclair, said they would preempt Kimmel’s show in their respective markets.

Iger’s deputy Dana Walden, who has a close relationship with Kimmel, later said the suspension was an effort to “take the temperature down” after Kimmel angered conservatives with a comment about the alleged killer of Charlie Kirk.

“We wanted to resolve the situation in a certain way to protect our employees, to think about our audience,” she told Bloomberg.

Walden is now D’Amaro’s No. 2 as the president and chief creative officer of Disney.

Nexstar and Sinclair are still in business with ABC and are still on the record as having reservations about Kimmel’s show. But they might hesitate to yank Kimmel this time around, since the backlash to their boycott was so intense last September.

Kimmel, who has been an outspoken critic of the president for years and has attended No Kings rallies in recent months, has argued that politics are “unavoidable” for him right now.

Earlier this month on Michelle Obama’s “IMO” podcast, he said, “I think it would be embarrassing if we didn’t talk about this. It would be shameful.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.